JOOP | SNIJDER Photography

Photo of the day - 2013/03/17

2013-03-21T17:30:00.001+01:00

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM
Canon 580 ex II
Pocket Wizard MiniTT1
Pocket Wizard FlexTT5

Camera settings:

1/80 @ f/5 @ ISO 640

Photo of the day - 2013/02/07

2013-02-07T16:30:00.004+01:00

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Samyang 14 mm

Camera settings:

15 sec @ f/11 @ ISO 200

Photo of the day - 2013/01/28

2013-01-28T22:43:00.002+01:00

Lighthouse Ameland

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Samyang 14 mm

Camera settings:

8 sec @ 14mm @ ISO 400

Photo of the day - 2013/01/22

2013-01-22T11:58:00.000+01:00

Golden Retriever running in snow

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
EF70-200mm f/2.8L USM

Camera settings:

1/640 @ f/4 @ ISO 200

Why I never ever delete a photo

2013-01-12T13:40:00.000+01:00

One the major questions when sorting out photos is whether to keep the photo or not. Some rephrase that to "To delete or no to delete, that's the question".

There are several of reasons why I don't delete photos and I must say that over the years these reasons are growing. An important reason is that somehow I can not pick all the real keepers in one batch. When I look back a week, a month or a year later, there are lots of times I missed a hidden winner. Another reason for me is that over time my knowledge and opinion changes. If deleted photos with today's knowledge and opinion, I take away the opportunity to change my mind. So my adagio is: it's easier to keep then recover or reshoot.

These are not all reasons. Like I said they are growing for me. In this post I want to dive a bit deeper in one of my new reasons I don't want to delete any photo.

Lately I'm totally into painting with light. It's a very rewarding technique but it involves a lot of planning and envisioning the end result. For those who are not familiar with the technique, it's photographing in the dark with long exposures. During that exposure I use a light source for example a flashlight to brighten a part of the scene.

Here's an example.

Example of technique painting-with-light

First of all it's all about picking a suitable location. Checking my photo library, I discovered a great place. A small chapel in the middle of a forest. I don't know why I snapped this picture. It's lifeless, the light is bad and there are lots and lots more reasons to throw this one in the bin. But instead of throwing it away I kept the photo, but didn't mark it as a 'keeper' in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. So when I search my photo library for photo for clients I don't get bothered with these 'bad' pictures.

Throw away candidate

Now I had a perfect starting point to explore if the place could be a candidate for painting-with-light. In Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop I turned the photo into a night scene, by bringing down the exposure. By painting back in some light selectively, I got an image where I see if the place has some potential or not. The process of painting-with-light takes long. Approximately 2 hours to take the photos and another 2 hours to merge them into one single image. So for me it's important to get everything clear before I go out and shoot.
Just to be extra clear, the photoshop result is not an end result, just to envision the outcome I have in mind.
From this photo I made a lighting plan (The light I painted back in photoshop was the starting point for the actual painting while creating the photo).
The image below showed me the potential of the location and I made my decision to go out and take the photo.

Daylight photo turned into night scene with Photoshop

All the preparations come together in the end result. You can see that this technique doesn't come close to the photoshop version, but in a good way. Now I have a photo full of life, real shapes and nice quality of light and lots of things going on.

End result of painting-with-light: Christ the Lord Chapel in Arnhem, The Netherlands

So again this is one of the reasons I do not throw photos away. Never, ever? Ok, when out-of-focus, accidental shots of the ground or my feet, they are gone forever. But beside that I keep them all, but separated from my real 'keepers'.

What are your thoughts about deleting photos? Let me know in the comments.

Photo of the day - 2009/07/13

2013-01-06T16:30:00.002+01:00

Trumpeter with Sunset

Canon EOS 5D
EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM

Camera settings:

1/200 @ f/5.6 @ ISO 100

Photo of the day - 2012/12/31

2012-12-31T12:44:00.000+01:00

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Samyang 14mm

Camera settings:

60 sec. @ f/8 @ ISO 100

Free Textures

2012-12-30T19:39:00.003+01:00

Lately I love to add some textures to my pet portraits. I like the extra structure and light fall that can give a photo a little punch. There a lots of free texture sets on the internet, for example here you find some great ones: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cliffordstextures.

Just until now I downloaded lots of them to include into my photography and in return I want to share some of my own textures with the community. The textures are all licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. This means you can modify the image and use it for non-commercial use.

I would really appreciate it, if you send me a link or comment with your creations based on my textures.

You can download them here

Brussels in Black and White

2012-12-16T14:39:00.001+01:00

Here's a set of photos from Brussels Belgium.

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Photo of the day - 2012/11/01

2012-11-01T17:43:00.001+01:00

Moment in Time

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Samyang 14mm

Camera settings:

40" @ f/4 @ ISO 320

Photo of the day - 2012/10/20

2012-10-20T17:36:00.002+02:00

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
EF17-40mm f/4L USM

Camera settings:

100" @ f/16 @ ISO 100

Photo of the day - 2012/10/15

2012-10-15T15:14:00.000+02:00

Subtropical Gardens of Abbotsbury

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM

Camera settings:

1/100 @ f/8 @ ISO 200

Photo of the day - 2012/09/18

2012-09-18T19:27:00.000+02:00

Burnham-on-sea

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM

Camera settings:

1/13 @ f/8 @ ISO 100

Photo of the day - 2012/08/14

2012-08-14T14:46:00.002+02:00

Into the Tunnel

Canon EOS 5D
EF17-40mm f/4L USM

Camera settings:

1/60 @ f/6.3 @ ISO 400

Photo of the day - 2012/08/11

2012-08-11T22:50:00.000+02:00

War Monument

Canon EOS 30D
Canon 10-22

Camera settings:

1/10s @ f/16 @ ISO 100

Photo of the day - 2012/08/07

2012-08-07T13:32:00.000+02:00

Old Car

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM

Camera settings:

50" @ f/11 @ ISO 100

Photo of the day - 2012/08/02

2012-08-02T12:33:00.000+02:00

The Old Factory

Old deserted factory in Lent, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Copyright (c) 2011 by Joop Snijder

Equipment used:

Camera settings:

66" @ f/22 @ ISO 50

Photo of the day - 2012/07/31

2012-07-31T18:34:00.000+02:00

Old Town Scenics in Jindrichuv Hradec, Czech Republic

View of medieval town in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic

Copyright (c) 2009 by Joop Snijder

Equipment used:

Canon EOS 5D
Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM

Camera settings:

10" @ f/5.6 @ ISO 100

Link: iPhone Photography a fresh perspective

2012-07-31T16:04:00.001+02:00

Since a couple of months I own an iPhone 4s, and although I photograph with a Canon 5D mkII, I like the camera on the phone. No kidding. It's great to have that kind of tool always around.

The best thing it's forcing me to look differently to scenes. The iPhone isn't capable of shooting like a DLSR, but it performs very well when you adjust your photography to the limitations of the iPhone.

On a regular walk with my dog, the light just turned beautiful. I didn't bring my Canon 5D mkII with me, but I really wanted to capture my dog in this beautiful light while she was standing just perfect. Before the iPhone I had a bad day because of a missed opportunity. From now on, I don't have any excuse.

Justin Balog wrote a great article called 'iPhone Photography a fresh perspective' about how to deal with the limitations of the iPhone and how to get better results and impressive photos (http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/07/21/iphone-photography-perspective/). Hope you like the article as much as I did.

Photo of the day - 2012/07/30

2012-07-30T21:43:00.000+02:00

Train post in Včelná, Czech Republic

Canon EOS 5D
EF17-40mm f/4L USM

Camera settings:

Mutiple Exposures@ f/11 @ ISO 100

Improve your landscape photography without Photoshop - Part 2

2012-07-30T19:22:00.000+02:00

This post is part of a series about how to improve your photography, especially landscape photography without using post processing in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom or whatever tool you use for retouching your photos.

In Part I I described the use of filters to improve your shots. Today the topic is a bit less sexier but more adventures: cleaning your gear.

Keep your gear clean

Although it sounds a bit of obvious tip, it's an important one. By keeping your lenses and filters clean. You don't have to get rid of all kind of spots and even more annoying sun flares. Finger spots on filters can cause them especially shooting back lit landscape scenes like sunrises or sunsets.

Keep your sensor clean

Here's the adventures part of today, cleaning your camera sensor. It's not that hard with the right equipment, but if you don't feel comfortable to do this yourself, well don't. Ask a pro to do it for you.

It's so important to keep your sensor clean. Here's a pretty good picture completely spoiled due to sensor spots:

It looks OK, but zooming in closely on the upper left corner (and emphasizing contrast) you can see a sky full of sensor spots. They are all over the place. At the time I took this photo back in 2006, I did not have the right equipment to clean the sensor myself. I spend more than one hour in Photoshop to remove all the spots and I'm still not completely satisfied with the end result.

If you want to give it a try, keep these things in mind:

It's on your own risk
Only use a fully loaded battery, so don't damage your shutter if the power cuts off
I use the Visible Dust Arctic Butterfly Professional Brush Cleaning Kit to clean my sensor. I don't like the wet solution, because they can damage the sensor easily. In all my years I never had to use a wet solution my self.
Turn the sensor opening down while cleaning. To lower the chances new dust gets into the camera and dust can fall out.
Shoot against a clear blue sky of white wall with a very small aperture (f/22) to check whether you removed all spots. If not, repeat the cleaning.

Hope you like this tip.

New Lightroom Preset "Golden Light"

2012-07-27T20:21:00.001+02:00

Here's a great new Lightroom preset over at Preset Pond.

The author wrote: "This is the perfect “golden light” portrait preset. Boosts greens & yellows. Best for spring/summer during sunset. Lightens up subject while keeping background contrasted."

Here's a before and after, as provided on Preset Pond:

So Preset Pond for this wonderful preset.

Photo of the day - 2012/07/23

2012-07-23T17:02:00.000+02:00

Medieval Church By Night

Canon EOS 5D
EF17-40mm f/4L USM

Camera settings:

120" @ f/20 @ ISO 100

Photo of the day - 2012/07/21

2012-07-21T13:07:00.002+02:00

What Golden Retrievers love

Copyright (c) 2012 by Joop Snijder, This photo is copyright protected and may not be used in any way without proper permission.

Equipment used:

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Camera settings:

1/500 @ @ ISO 200

Improve your landscape photography without Photoshop - Part 1

2012-07-19T17:58:00.001+02:00

This post is part of a series about how to improve your shots, especially landscape photos without post-processing in Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom or whatever tool you're using to retouch your photos.

Use filters

The first tip in these series is using filters. There are different kind of filters and it's beyond this article which one is best for which event. Try them, use them and above all carry them with you, so you have them in your bag when needed.

I like to shoot with a B+W 77mm Circular Polarizer, Cokin Filter Z Series Filters and a Hoya ND400 Neutral Density filter.

Stack filters

Even better than using one filter is stacking filters and create stunning effects. For the photos below I used a combination of a ND400 filter to crank up the shutter time (for long exposure) and a Cokin Z 3 stops GND filter to hold back the sky.

These filters made it simple to capture the windy and stormy weather.

Here you can see my setup for these pictures. A Canon EOS 5D Mark II

and a Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM